On December 3-7, 2000 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) held a regional workshop in Korea entitled "Configuration Management and Managing Safety during planned Outages." The workshop was hosted by the Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO) at their Nuclear Power Education Centre (KNPEC) near the Kori Nuclear Power Plant a few miles north of Pusan, Korea. Participants came from China (2), India (3), Korea (15) and Pakistan (2). In addition to myself the other foreign lecturers were Bertil Hansson (IAEA), Peter Anderson (British Energy) and Greg Maret (US).

The objectives of the Configuration management portion of the program were to:

• provide the participants with a frame of reference by introducing them to accepted standards and guidelines for an effective CM program
• describe the benchmarking efforts of the Configuration Management Benchmarking Group (CMBG) and provide and overview of British Energy’s and Duke Power’s CM program
• introduce several topics which represent challenges to an effective CM Program and stimulate discussion on meeting those challenges

My participation at this conference included the presentation of four lectures and four workshops.

1. Fundamentals of CM
2. Configuration Management Program – Experience and Benchmarking
3. Plant Configuration Management program and it’s elements
4. Duke Power Experience

Lectures 1 and 3 were academic presentations aimed at providing the participants with an introduction to the fundamentals and elements of Configuration Management as recognized by leading guidance documents both in the US and internationally. These presentations were based on material in ANSI CM 1.0-2000 "Configuration Management of Nuclear Facilities," and the draft IAEA Configuration Management Guideline.

Lectures 2 and 4 were information sharing discussions to provide a history and overview of the benchmarking efforts of the Configuration Management Benchmarking Group (CMBG) and the CM program at Duke Power.

1. Promoting a CM culture
2. Training
3. Defining CM Boundaries
4. Preventing and Eliminating Document Backlogs

In the Lecture / Workshops, I introduced a topics of interest with about 15 minutes presentation. Then the participants were split into 4-5 breakout groups and each group discussed the topic and returned a group report.

The participants were very receptive to the topic of Configuration Management. The four countries represented have 30 operating nuclear units and another 21 units in design or construction. With so many units nearing commissioning (startup), the participants were interested in how to capture design basis information from the architect-engineer for the operating utility to maintain.

Presentation of the two subjects, Configuration Management and managing safety during outages, were well integrated. By presenting the modules on Configuration Management first, we were able to relate the importance of Configuration Management to the management of safety during outages during the discussion of those topics.